Class Volante
History= After the adnilho wars, a new generation of ships needed to be commissioned, due to the considerable loss of ships in the battle of Earth. One of these new ships to come out of dry dock was the Volante: A tribute to a style of car used by the car maker Aston Martin in the late 20th and early 21st century. The Volante was one of the first ships to be commissioned in around 2058 and had some of the most advanced equipment that was used by the tauri. This ship is meant to replace the dante-class battlecruiser, due to the nature of the Earth battle, the 2 tier system was no longer required as it took too much time to build and was too complicated. So much of the tauri fleet had been lost in that battle, that the tauri needed ships fast and so some ships were replaced by new ones. After the clash with the vasnalok at the edge of the galaxy 2 years before the release of this ship, a number of upgrades had to occur, due to the nature of the vasnalok weapons, the shields especially had to be able to withstand more powerful weapons and be able to recover from failing as quick as possible. So the new generation of shielding should be able to survive much longer in these sorts of battles. R&D in the past has been working of lowering the amount of thermal radiation emanating from tauri systems and so in the volante, the systems only emit 50% of the heat that comes out. So to enemy sensors, they will only see something the size of a small cruiser. Another new feature, was the triangular exhausts on the back: this signifies a change in sublight engines for the volante. Instead of just the old ion engines, new fusion afterburners were added to the ship. This allows the ship to move upto 10% faster than the equivalent ship using just ion engines. However, the afterburners can only be used for up to 90 seconds. Also, it is thought that the speed difference could be much greater, given more research time. So the top sublight speed of the Volante is rumoured to be around 70 -75% of light speed with the afterburners. On to the new weapons: the first upgrade is the brand new twin-six barrelled gattling guns. Using the old technique of increasing the barrels angular velocity to generate high kinetic energy rounds, the new guns have 6 barrels on each centrifuge and as each gun has 2 centrifuges, this means that a greater amount of rounds can be fired at once. Each barrel holds 1000 rounds, so each gun holds 12,000 rounds. While the guns start slow, by the time they are at maximum revolution, the maximum linear velocity is about mach 60 with the guns rotating at 11,000 revolutions per second. Maximum revolution takes 5 minutes to complete, but by that time half of the barrels rounds have already gone so that means only half will travel at maximum revolution. The 30 are split: 18 on top and 12 below. The final weapon is the new missile: the Mark II naquadah enhanced fusion missile. The missile is similar to the Mark I, except it is less powerful. Many would think that’s a bad upgrade. But there is a reason for this: the Mark I was very expensive and difficult to store, in fact only the dante could store it, but then only 2 at the time. It was a superweapon, that was rarely ever used in any battle and so it was decommissioned and the “Fusion2” replaced it. It was considerably cheaper in materials (only a bit more expensive than a mark X missile), so that meant more of them could be developed and stored. The overall loss of power has been around 25%, but due to the nature of the materials involved, a saving of around 30 – 35% has been made. The main goal of the Volante, was for it to be built relatively quickly and cheaply, but to balance that with energy efficiency and power. It’s only a matter of time before the ship is called into service and will engage on the battlefield. The confidence in this ship is almost a foregone conclusion and many of the highest ranked officials have given the thumbs up to the Volante-class and set it into mass production. It will take around 10 – 12 weeks to build the ship and it is believed that around 60 will be churned out this year from tauri shipyards in the Milky Way and Pegasus. In training simulations, the Volante came out on top in most simulated battles, only the Gaia, Constellation and Leviathon were able to destroy it. =Technology= Powerplant ~2 Mark VII naquadah generators ~1 Mark VI naquadah generator Propulsion ~10 large sublight Ion Drives ~2 large fusion afterburners ~One hyperspace window generator ~Anti-gravity wave generator network Weapons ~30x twin-six barrelled gattling guns (12,000 rounds each) ~ 6x Mk III ion cannons ~ 27x Mk 64 Vertical missile silos with 3 missiles in each silo ~ 10x Mk XI naquadah enhanced nuclear missiles ~ 8x Mk II Naquadah enhanced nuclear fusion missiles Defenses ~Advanced Asgard/Tau'ri design shields ~Trinium-based armor plating Communications Additional Technology ~Asgard transporter ~Asgard sensors ~Active Camouflage ~ Low-thermal emission technology =Technical Specifications= =Locations= Bridge Engineering Flight Deck Officer's Mess Medical Bay Ship Armory Other =Notes= =Known Ships= Alternate Timeline Vessels Volante (shelton refit, 2060) Vantage (2061) Scuderia (2061) Capri(2061, destroyed 2062) =References= =External Links